In April, the SoMa West Community Benefit District collected more than 35 tons of trash, or nearly 71,000 pounds of trash. In 2021, Tenderloin Community Benefit District cleaners collected a whopping 146 tons or 292,600 pounds of waste.

San Francisco is home to 17 of these organizations, most of which are concentrated in the city’s densely populated downtown core. It sounds like a lot of political jargon, and that’s because it is.

But community benefit districts (CBDs) play a critical role in the city, cleaning streets — sometimes faster than the Department of Public Works (DPW) — and connecting community members in SF’s often chaotic commercial and mixed-use neighborhoods.

You might even pay to have a CBD operating in your neighborhood, but you’ll only know about this if you’re a homeowner and pay close attention to your property tax bill, which lists a special tax bill that covers the cost of the CBD.

A member of the Tenderloin Community Benefit District cleans a sidewalk in the Tenderloin neighborhood on June 2, 2023 in San Francisco. | Jason Henry for The Standard

Some downtown CBDs say they are growing rapidly as cleanliness issues worsen across the city. Some even offer homeless services, while others have established safety programs for children and the elderly.

The Tenderloin CBD started in 2005 with a strong focus on cleaning up the streets; It now does much more than just bagging rubbish.

“Our goals have expanded, and our mission has expanded beyond just cleanliness,” said Kate Robinson, Managing Director of Tenderloin CBD. “It’s part of what we’re focused on, but our roots in residential home leadership and community engagement haven’t changed.”

This is how these groups work.

“98% of the 311 calls in the tenderloin”

Founded as stopgap groups to support entrepreneurs in busy litter-heavy areas, groups have become important safety nets and are increasingly taking on city responsibilities.

“We are the last resort and the first responder and safety net for broken city policies — or state policies, not just the city,” said Christian Martin, executive director of SoMa West CBD.

A member of the SoMa West Community Benefit District calls outside the organization’s Howard Street office in San Francisco on June 1, 2023. | Benjamin Fanjoy for The Standard

“The city shouldn’t do less in your neighborhood because you have a CBD — they shouldn’t penalize areas that put these things in place that are meant to complement city services,” he added.

The city’s overdose crisis and its cleanliness concerns worsened during the pandemic, but a 2012 city report shows that CBDs have long outpaced other San Francisco agencies in providing cleaning, public safety, and community-based services. Recent data shows that this remains the case.

CONTINUE READING: San Francisco’s streets are dirty. A new poll shows just how dirty it is

“Public Works still offers the basic service, but the CBDs are intended to go beyond that basic service,” said Rachel Gordon, spokeswoman for Public Works. “If they can make a call faster than us and they have local support in the neighborhoods, then that’s helpful.”

Some CBDs say they have given up requesting certain city services and have taken matters into their own hands: SoMa West has developed its own app to track 311 cleaning calls and initiate service requests, and the cleaning crew captains say that reporting incidents to city authorities would take too long.

“We currently respond to 98% of 311 calls in the tenderloin,” said Robinson. “Our response time is within hours, while DPW’s response time is significantly faster. But we view our relationship with DPW as a partnership: they really focus on issues that we cannot solve.”

A SoMa West Community Benefit District street sweeper stands on Howard Street in San Francisco on June 1, 2023. | Benjamin Fanjoy for The Standard

In neighborhoods like Tenderloin or SoMa, rampant drug use and streetside camps have increased CBD workloads.

In the three years that Hanif Hakeem has served as West SoMa Group’s sole homeless worker, he has helped numerous homeless people find beds, food and other resources.

Although Hakeem says some residents in shelters may have misconceptions or stigma towards their homeless neighbors, “we’re finding out their names,” Hakeem said.

“We build a relationship with them because who knows, they might want help later. Because we’ve been nice and cool to them, they’ll be more willing to work with us,” Hakeem added.

Street ambassadors like Hakeem, who was formerly homeless, believe the efforts of local CBDs on the ground are vital to helping strained city authorities. But some Downtown CBD officials worry the city may be relying too heavily on them to solve all of San Francisco’s worsening problems.

“It’s gotten worse. It’s become more of a business,” Hakeem said. “They keep making band-aids – they keep giving people band-aids when they clearly need surgery. And that kind of hurts.

“No, that minimizes it. “This shit hurts,” Hakeem added.

ASK THE STANDARD: 6 of the most common questions about homelessness in San Francisco answered

Members of San Francisco’s Homeless Outreach Team conduct health screenings and distribute food to people lying in the tenderloin on Jones Street on December 17, 2021. | James Wyatt

What is a CBD?

What is believed to be the first CBD was established in Canada in 1969. About 20 years later, California passed legislation allowing these organizations to form in the state.

San Francisco is now home to 17 different CBDs, or Business Improvement Districts, which act as non-profit liaison points between city officials and residents. Most are focused on cleanliness, but some — like the SF Tourism Improvement District — are designed to encourage business and travel opportunities in select neighborhoods.

Any community can choose to set up a CBD – just gather and organize enough property owners to agree to pay the valuation fees. Once a community receives approval from the property owners, the neighborhood establishes the CBD as a non-profit organization and the organization distributes taxpayer money for various improvements.

“So if there is a CBD, the property owners are basically paying the CBD to take their responsibility for keeping their sidewalk clean,” said Andrea Aiello, director of the Castro CBD. Aiello noted that city and state regulations require property owners to clean the area around their property. According to Aiello, CBDs are stepping in to take some of the strain off busy residents.

These cleaning operations range from graffiti removal to removing bulky items from the streets and are in addition to the routine services of the Department of Public Works and Ecology.

“When I started it was a lot more chaotic than it is now. I think on one of my first days I was able to get hold of 30, almost 40 bags at one point [of trash]– a spot!” said Enrique Cervantes, a cleanup ambassador at the SoMa West CBD. “Now I hardly ever do that.”

Enrique Cervantes, a member of the SoMa West Community Benefit District, pushes his walking cart used for cleanups in San Francisco on June 1, 2023. | Benjamin Fanjoy for The Standard

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What takes four years to make and costs more than $20,000? A trash can in San Francisco.

That costly, boxy bin is among six trash cans hitting San Francisco’s streets this summer in the city’s long saga in search of the perfect can. Overflowing trash cans are a common sight in the Northern California city, along with piles of used clothes, shoes, furniture, and other items strewn about on sometimes-impassable sidewalks.

City officials hired a Bay Area industrial firm to custom-design the pricey trash can along with two other prototypes that cost taxpayers $19,000 and $11,000 each. This summer, residents have the opportunity to evaluate them along with three off-the-shelf options added to the pilot program after officials faced criticism.

Last month, the city deployed 15 custom-made trash cans and 11 off-the-shelf trash cans — each of those costing from $630 to $2,800 — with QR codes affixed to them asking residents to fill out a survey. City officials said they intend to pay no more than $3,000 per can.

San Francisco began its search for the perfect trash can in 2018 when officials decided it was time to replace the more than 3,000 public bins that have been on the streets for almost 20 years.

Officials say the current bins have too big a hole that allows for easy rummaging. The bins also have hinges that need constant repair and locks that are easy to breach. Some people also topple them over, cover them in graffiti, or set them on fire.

The city is so serious about the endeavor it has created interactive maps so residents can track and test the different designs, which include the Soft Square, the priciest prototype at $20,900. The boxy stainless steel receptacle has openings for trash and for can and bottle recycling and includes a foot pedal. The Slim Silhouette, at $18,800 per prototype, is made of stainless steel bars that would give graffiti artists less space to tag.

If one of the custom-designed bins is chosen, the cost to mass produce it will be $2,000 to $3,000 per piece, said Beth Rubenstein, a spokeswoman for San Francisco’s Department of Public Works.

“We live in a beautiful city, and we want (the trash can) to be functional and cost-effective, but it needs to be beautiful,” she said.

But the good looks of the shiny new trash cans have not protected them from vandalism and disrespect. Three weeks after being unveiled, several have already been tagged with orange and white graffiti. Others already show the drip stains of inconsiderate coffee drinkers or have attracted dumping, with people leaving dilapidated bathroom cabinets and plastic bags full of empty wine bottles next to them.

Trash on San Francisco city streets has been an issue for decades. In 2007, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom eliminated about 1,500 of the city’s 4,500 trash cans because he said they were not helping keep streets clean and were becoming magnets for more trash. Officials couldn’t say how many receptacles are currently on the curb, but the city plans to replace at least 3,000.

“A trash can is one of the most basic functions of city governance and if the city can’t do something as simple as this, how can they solve the bigger issues of homelessness and safety and poverty?” asked Matt Haney, a former supervisor who lives in the Tenderloin neighborhood and now represents the area in the California Assembly.

New trash cans will be the latest addition to the city’s arsenal against its dirty streets. In 2014, San Francisco launched its “Pit Stop” program in the Tenderloin neighborhood, the epicenter of drug dealing and homelessness in the city, setting up portable public toilets. In 2018, the city created a six-person “poop patrol” team amid demand to power wash sidewalks.

Haney said that as a supervisor he reluctantly agreed last year to approve the pilot program despite the high prices to avoid delays.

“I think most people, including me, would say just replace the damn cans with cans that we know work in other cities, just do it,” he said.

Haney said the “whole trash can saga has this stench of corruption,” referring to disgraced former Department of Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, who pleaded guilty in January to federal wire fraud charges. Nuru awarded the contract to maintain San Francisco’s trash cans to a company owned by a relative of a developer who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and is cooperating with federal authorities in the case against Nuru.

On top of the corruption, the city has long been the butt of jokes for how long it takes to complete public works projects of all kinds.

A bus rapid transit system along Van Ness Avenue, one of the city’s main arteries, finally opened this year after 27 years of construction. A new subway line connecting Chinatown with other areas of the city that started construction in 2010 is four years behind schedule. In 2017, the city completed the Transbay Transit Center only a year late, but the $2 billion terminal abruptly shut down six weeks later after crews discovered two cracked steel girders.

Ultimately, what trash can the city gets will depend on feedback from sanitation employees, and the surveys completed by the end of September, Rubenstein said. The new cans are not expected on the streets until the end of 2023.

Diane Torkelson, who often picks up trash in her Inner Richmond neighborhood with other volunteers, recently trekked 5 miles (8 kilometers) with a dozen other civic-minded San Franciscans to examine three of the cans.

The two prototypes were already full when the group arrived to check them out, she said.

“If the trash can is full, it’s of no use, no matter how well it was designed,” she said.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — What takes four years to make and costs more than $20,000? A trash can in San Francisco.

That costly, boxy bin is among six trash cans hitting San Francisco’s streets this summer in the city’s long saga in search of the perfect can. Overflowing trash cans are a common sight in the Northern California city, along with piles of used clothes, shoes, furniture, and other items strewn about on sometimes-impassable sidewalks.

City officials hired a Bay Area industrial firm to custom-design the pricey trash can along with two other prototypes that cost taxpayers $19,000 and $11,000 each. This summer, residents have the opportunity to evaluate them along with three off-the-shelf options added to the pilot program after officials faced criticism.

Last month, the city deployed 15 custom-made trash cans and 11 off-the-shelf trash cans — each of those costing from $630 to $2,800 — with QR codes affixed to them asking residents to fill out a survey. City officials said they intend to pay no more than $3,000 per can.

San Francisco began its search for the perfect trash can in 2018 when officials decided it was time to replace the more than 3,000 public bins that have been on the streets for almost 20 years.

Officials say the current bins have too big a hole that allows for easy rummaging. The bins also have hinges that need constant repair and locks that are easy to breach. Some people also topple them over, cover them in graffiti, or set them on fire.

The city is so serious about the endeavor it has created interactive maps so residents can track and test the different designs, which include the Soft Square, the priciest prototype at $20,900. The boxy stainless steel receptacle has openings for trash and for can and bottle recycling and includes a foot pedal. The Slim Silhouette, at $18,800 per prototype, is made of stainless steel bars that would give graffiti artists less space to tag.

If one of the custom-designed bins is chosen, the cost to mass produce it will be $2,000 to $3,000 per piece, said Beth Rubenstein, a spokeswoman for San Francisco’s Department of Public Works.

“We live in a beautiful city, and we want (the trash can) to be functional and cost-effective, but it needs to be beautiful,” she said.

But the good looks of the shiny new trash cans have not protected them from vandalism and disrespect. Three weeks after being unveiled, several have already been tagged with orange and white graffiti. Others already show the drip stains of inconsiderate coffee drinkers or have attracted dumping, with people leaving dilapidated bathroom cabinets and plastic bags full of empty wine bottles next to them.

Trash on San Francisco city streets has been an issue for decades. In 2007, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom eliminated about 1,500 of the city’s 4,500 trash cans because he said they were not helping keep streets clean and were becoming magnets for more trash. Officials couldn’t say how many receptacles are currently on the curb, but the city plans to replace at least 3,000.

“A trash can is one of the most basic functions of city governance and if the city can’t do something as simple as this, how can they solve the bigger issues of homelessness and safety and poverty?” asked Matt Haney, a former supervisor who lives in the Tenderloin neighborhood and now represents the area in the California Assembly.

New trash cans will be the latest addition to the city’s arsenal against its dirty streets. In 2014, San Francisco launched its “Pit Stop” program in the Tenderloin neighborhood, the epicenter of drug dealing and homelessness in the city, setting up portable public toilets. In 2018, the city created a six-person “poop patrol” team amid demand to power wash sidewalks.

Haney said that as a supervisor he reluctantly agreed last year to approve the pilot program despite the high prices to avoid delays.

“I think most people, including me, would say just replace the damn cans with cans that we know work in other cities, just do it,” he said.

Haney said the “whole trash can saga has this stench of corruption,” referring to disgraced former Department of Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, who pleaded guilty in January to federal wire fraud charges. Nuru awarded the contract to maintain San Francisco’s trash cans to a company owned by a relative of a developer who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and is cooperating with federal authorities in the case against Nuru.

On top of the corruption, the city has long been the butt of jokes for how long it takes to complete public works projects of all kinds.

A bus rapid transit system along Van Ness Avenue, one of the city’s main arteries, finally opened this year after 27 years of construction. A new subway line connecting Chinatown with other areas of the city that started construction in 2010 is four years behind schedule. In 2017, the city completed the Transbay Transit Center only a year late, but the $2 billion terminal abruptly shut down six weeks later after crews discovered two cracked steel girders.

Ultimately, what trash can the city gets will depend on feedback from sanitation employees, and the surveys completed by the end of September, Rubenstein said. The new cans are not expected on the streets until the end of 2023.

Diane Torkelson, who often picks up trash in her Inner Richmond neighborhood with other volunteers, recently trekked 5 miles (8 kilometers) with a dozen other civic-minded San Franciscans to examine three of the cans.

The two prototypes were already full when the group arrived to check them out, she said.

“If the trash can is full, it’s of no use, no matter how well it was designed,” she said.

Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Part of the issue with these cans has to do with the maintenance of them, which the city contracts out to a third party.

“The contract for these [renaissance] trash cans came about in a way that very possibly could have been corrupt,” said Supervisor Haney.

Walter Wong was a permit expediter in San Francisco who pleaded guilty in 2020 to charges of conspiracy. He — and then director of the Department of Public Works, Mohammed Nuru — worked together to trade city contract gifts. The contract to maintain San Francisco’s trash cans went to a company called Alternate Choice LLC — owned by a family member of Wong — in 2018.

A ‘big belly’ trash can in District 6. (Christopher J. Beale/KQED)

City supervisors like Haney tried for years to get the trash cans in their districts replaced with newer, more effective models but say it was Nuru who stood in the way.

“He was adamant in his protection of these broken trash cans. And I think it was pretty clear that he was protecting his buddies who were giving us really crappy cans,” Haney said.

Wong is now participating with federal investigators in the corruption probe against Nuru, who pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges earlier this year after being arrested and indicted in 2020.

The road to the perfect can

Nuru did eventually set into motion a process to replace San Francisco’s green Renaissance cans with some new ones. But, off-the-rack cans — the kind you might find in another American city — weren’t considered suitable for the project.

The Department of Public Works want something tamper-proof, with wheels on the inner can so workers won’t get hurt emptying them, and a sensor that can tell when they’re full. Oh, and they have to be attractive. The department commissioned a custom-designed can.

The prototypes will cost an estimated $12,000 each and will be fabricated locally and tested alongside some off-the-rack designs. Gordon says the prototypes do cost a lot of money. “I don’t think anyone can say otherwise. But will it be money well spent? We hope so,” she said.

After prototyping, the selected can’s manufacturing is expected to cost less than half of the prototype, which is comparable to the price paid in other US cities.

The three trash can prototypes that will be created and tested in San Francisco. (Courtesy of Institute for Creative Integration)

This new-can-selection process has its critics. Supervisor Haney said, “Ultimately, San Francisco shouldn’t be in the trash can making business. The conditions that we face on our streets are not fundamentally different than an LA and New York, or Chicago, DC, Oakland, and there is plenty of data that we can look at in terms of prototypes, but here we are.”

The new cans

Three new trash can prototypes are being considered, with hopes they can solve many of the problems presented by the current cans.

The post The Sordid Saga of San Francisco’s Trash Cans appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

SAN FRANCISCO — The trash disposal companies that serve San Francisco have agreed to pay a $36 million criminal penalty for their role in a wide-ranging federal public corruption probe involving the city’s former public works director.

The three subsidiaries of Recology Inc. admitted to conspiring to bribe the former director and agreed to cooperate in investigations for three years in exchange for the government deferring prosecution, acting US Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds announced Thursday. A judge must sign off on the agreement.

A Recology subsidiary serves serving Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Petaluma, Cotati, Sebastopol, Cloverdale, Healdsburg, unincorporated Sonoma County, Novato, Stinson Beach, Bolinas, West Marin and Point Arena.

Prosecutors say the San Francisco companies, which have a monopoly there, conspired to bribe Mohammed Nuru from 2014 through January 2020, when the then-director of the Department of Public Works was arrested and charged with fraud.

Recology funneled more than $900,000 to Nuru, including money to a non-profit controlled by Nuru and $60,000 a year for an annual and lavish public works holiday party, prosecutors said. As director and waste regulator, Nuru could influence contract rates favorable to Recology.

Separately, Recology earlier this year agreed to refund customers $100 million after the city attorney’s office found the company had improperly raised trash disposal prices over four years. By law, the company will continue to have the exclusive right to dispose of waste in San Francisco.

The federal investigation has ensnared several City Hall officials and insiders, including the former head of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

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It’s no secret that much of San Francisco’s trash – especially in neighborhoods like Mission, Tenderloin, and Mission Dolores – ends up on the sidewalks.

Christine, an owner who lives on 21st Street near Mission Street, was outside her house one morning picking up bits and pieces armed with pliers with a pliers-armed grasping tool. “In an ideal world, people would have to deposit their rubbish somewhere,” she says.

Christine has garbage bags, metal garbage collectors, and gloves ready to pick up garbage that has been left in front of her home on the mission. She says if she picks up the trash herself, it is less likely to attract further dumping. But if she sees feces on the street, she’ll report it. Photo by Clara-Sophia Daly.

But in San Francisco, this place was on the sidewalk or on the steps of Christine’s property, where she regularly cleaned up trash – sometimes she had to call the city’s 311 hotline for human feces and diarrhea.

Angel Mayorga, a 63-year-old resident who lived in the Mission his entire life, frequently uses the 311 application on his iPhone to send notices to the San Francisco Public Works. You clean up, but the problem remains. “Clean streets and cleanliness are a basic human need,” Mayorga said. “It’s going to be disgusting.”

But it’s not just human feces that residents always call to clean up, it’s everyday trash – cans, old meals, food packaging – the kind of trash residents would normally throw in a jar.

A public works clerk loads trash left on the sidewalk into his truck at the mission. Photo by Clara-Sophia Daly.

The Mission and San Francisco used to have what most cities have: ubiquitous public garbage cans. But in 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom decided that the best way to reduce garbage in San Francisco is to get rid of trash cans.

Ross Mirkarimi, former sheriff and supervisor of District 5, recalled a meeting with then Mayor Gavin Newsom and other senior officials. According to Mirkarimi, city guides believed that “trash cans become a magnet for more rubbish that goes beyond the can. They believed that cans become a marker for people to unload what they wanted.”

“I wasn’t in favor of taking away trash cans,” says Mirkarimi. “I didn’t find it intuitive, but the administration so insisted that this was an experiment we had to try.”

And they did. Around 1,500 trash cans were pulled from the streets of the city.

Nowadays, residents routinely walk several blocks before running into a trash can. On the way you can see to-go containers, paper bags, masks, gloves and other rubbish from other pedestrians who have simply given up trying to find a trash can. And that’s no wonder.

In 2007 the city had 4,500 trash cans. We now have 3,113 public trash cans – 1,500 fewer than 14 years ago.

And when compared to other cities, 4,500 doses added up to very few for a 47 square mile city. 3,113 even less. Manhattan, for example, has three times the number of trash cans – 9,144 – to cover its 23 square miles, according to the New York City Sanitation Department.

In contrast, the abundance of trash cans in Manhattan is easy to spot. Go everywhere and almost every corner has a trash can. In San Francisco, go with the trash in hand and keep walking. Anyone who has a dog knows that you have to walk at least a few blocks to find a garbage can.

Although the idea of ​​ridding a city of public garbage cans in order to clean them up doesn’t sound intuitive, it is based on the idea that when a city has many public garbage cans, people take advantage of them and for illegal dumping of household or business waste use. Other cities have come to the same conclusion.

In fact, New York City dumped 223 trash cans in Harlem in 2008 when officials decided the trash cans were attracting dumping. This experiment was also unsuccessful. Removing the baskets did not “significantly reduce litter,” according to the NYC Department of Sanitation.

The failure of Newsom’s plan to solve the city’s garbage problem has not gone unnoticed.

Experiment on the trash can for public works from 2017

In April 2017, Public Works, in collaboration with Mayor Ed Lee and District Supervisor Hillary Ronen, installed 38 new trash cans along the Mission Street corridor between 14th and Cesar Chavez streets. The aptly named “Yes We Can” pilot program in the Mission District was a direct response to the idea that more bins could mean less rubbish on the sidewalk and on the streets.

At the time, promises were made to see if “the extra considerations lead to less garbage and fewer complaints” until 311, which launched in 2008.

Public Works Spokeswoman Rachel Gordon examined the service request 12 months before the new cans and 12 months after and said, “We have seen more calls for overflowing cans, but we haven’t seen noticeably more complaints for garbage-related services . “

There is no data on calls for overflowing cans, but during the trial period the service calls for the scatter patrol increased from an average of 77 per month to 74 per month and the service calls for illegal dumping increased went from 70 per month to 61 per month according to the program.

Public Works’ Gordon believes the 38 new bins are still there.

Currently, San Francisco still has that 3,113 public trash cans left after Newsom’s plan went into effect, compared to 5,000 in 2007. Recology says the trash cans along 24th Street, Mission Street and Cesar Chavez are serviced at least twice a day, seven days a week.

Gordon says that if district overseers want more cans, they’ll add more so long as the cans “don’t cause more problems than they help”.

Supervisor Ronen said, “For starters, we need more bins outside of each of our parks – Garfield, Jose Coronado, Parque Ninos Unidos.” She added that she has “advocated more and better trash cans for District 9 for years.”
Indeed, San Francisco is in the process of choosing from a range of new designs.

For now, some say the trash cans in San Francisco are easy to search (for both rodents and humans) and difficult to tell whether or not they are for trash or recycling.

Honey Mahogany, a legal advisor to Supervisor Matt Haney, called the current cans “renaissance trash cans,” meaning they’re easy to abuse, and said they were picked by former public works director Mohammed Nuru, though he was told that they were ineffective by some superiors, including Mirkarimi, according to him.

Reporting of garbage and garbage to public works by 311

Tracking the amount of trash on the sidewalk in San Francisco is made possible by data from 311, a phone number, and now an app that residents can use to report trash on the streets of San Francisco.

The service launched in 2008, a year after Newsom got rid of 1,500 trash cans. So there are no comparisons before and after. Mayor Ed Lee introduced the 311 app in August 2013.

In the past five years, Mission Dolores had the second highest number of garbage complaints, adjusted for population size. Mission comes third, and fillet comes first because it has the most complaints about junk.

In 2019, the Mission had the second highest volume of 311 faecal removal calls with 14 percent of citywide inquiries or a total of 3,942 service calls. The demand for overfilled containers rose last year to 1,613 – and thus took third place in calls via trash cans.

If the garbage ends up on the sidewalk, residents call or file a report on 311 and the public works department crews pick up the garbage.

Fewer bins and bigger budgets for Recology and the Public Works Department

Although the city’s population has increased by a little more than 10 Percent since Newsom’s 2007 plan went into effect and the city has 1,500 fewer public bins. Even so, according to Recology spokesman Robert Reed, Recology’s budget has “increased by more than a third to more than $ 22 million a year”.

As for the public works department, which picks up street litter on the 311 calls, crews, which include workers, truck drivers and supervisors, have increased 25 percent over the past five years to 349.

Gordon said the goal is to respond to street cleaning requests within 48 hours. 24 hours for human / animal waste. “Public Works achieved that goal for 91.4 percent of inquiries, she said.

But much of the rubbish is not reported and remains on the street.

Anthony, a public works worker who picked up trash on Bartlett Street at Mission, said he was struggling to keep up with requests.

“Right now I’m backed up … still trying to catch up from two days ago and we have one thing in town where we should get it done in a certain time, so I’m just trying to do what I do can do to get it done. “

Paul Monge, an aide to Supervisor Ronen, referred to Proposal B, which 61 percent of voters approved in November, with no additional bins or crews.

No trash cans or garbage crews will be added, but it will provide oversight of the Public Works Department, and it will also create a new Sanitation and Roads Department in 2022 and a five-person Sanitary and Roads Commission to help them monitor.

Until then, the superiors appease their voters with different solutions.

Mahogany, who helped write Proposition B, says Haney used adback money, or money found through the town’s regular budget process granted to the community, to clean up the streets around the Tenderloin and Civic Center where excessive garbage hurt small businesses.

“Our office has taken the cleaning of the district into its own hands and has spent funds on street cleaning, invested more directly in cleaning and passed an ordinance making public bathrooms nearby [homeless] Warehouse. ”

“As a city, we do not invest in maintaining streets, and it is mainly people of color in urban areas who are affected by DPW who do not take responsibility for cleaning the sidewalks.”

Mission residents like Francesca Pastine, who has lived in the mission since 1994 and in San Francisco since 1976, regularly send Ronen’s office emails with photos of the littered streets.

She would like to see public works take on more responsibility and work proactively to clean up rubbish.

Gordon of Public Works says, “But we also need to focus on why roads are destroyed in the first place.”

She blames San Francisco residents for sloppy thinking and unconcern. She tries to confront this with public awareness campaigns in schools and elsewhere. But education has not worked so far.

Mirkarimi agrees that it’s up to the residents. “If there is no kind of accountability for social and personal responsibility to work,” the city will not be cleaned up.

Photo by Lydia Chavez

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